John Entwistle Sotheby auction online

[muggsy]

The auction is closed, and it brought in 1,093,372 GBP. The Frankenstein bass sold for 62,400 and a 1958 Gibson Explorer was the most expensive item at 95,200. At least I got a copy of the catalog.

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At the Sotheby's site you can click on "show lot name" to see a brief description of each lot.

 

[The Mock Turtle Regulator]

...so it's fair to say that they set the estimated prices low....

I wonder who the buyers of the most expensive items were- i'm guessing Frankenstein and the Alembic explorers are now residing in bank vaults somewhere in Japan.

ironic that the item that raised the most, mainly due to its association with a bass player, was a guitar.

 

[hitman9696]

I can't believe the "Frankenstein" is the bass he used at Woodstock and Leeds. No wonder it sold for that much. And the fact that it is of a unique blend.

Wonder who got his hands on it... Imagine it's Pete Townshend, who broke it to pieces, as soon as he got it. Remember that Entwistle almost never broke his gear. So probably Townshend always had the urge to smash some of his bandmate's basses.

Who knows, right?

 

[RAM]

Originally posted by hitman9696
Remember that Entwistle almost never broke his gear.

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Sorry...couldn't resist...

 

[The Mock Turtle Regulator]

he mentioned smashing a Buzzard after he couldn't stop the strings from buzzing- maybe that was it?

ps. fret numbers inlaid on the fingerboard?
-to make reading tab easier, perhaps?

 

[PhatBasstard]

Originally posted by The Mock Turtle Regulator
he mentioned smashing a Buzzard after he couldn't stop the strings from buzzing- maybe that was it?

He was asked, in an interview, since his string action was extremely low, was he bothered by fret buzz. He replied "On the contrary. I want them all to buzz evenly."

 

[Rusty Chainsaw]

When I was in The Gallery in Camden on Saturday, a guy came in with one of Entwistle's Alembics that he won in the auction, a 4-string "crab"-style with a very thin graphite neck and a Bigsby-style tremolo. Apparently he paid "only" £5000 for it...!

I managed to get my grubby little hands on it for a couple of minutes... the neck was almost unplayably thin, and was strung with really light gauge strings. But it sounded fantastic and totally had "his" sound. It's not everyday you get to play a late rock star's bass...

Russ

 

[The Mock Turtle Regulator]

Originally posted by PhatBasstard

He was asked, in an interview, since his string action was extremely low, was he bothered by fret buzz. He replied "On the contrary. I want them all to buzz evenly."

I dug out the Bassist Magazine interview-
Vol. 1 no.5
p14;

"There's one in my studio, a black Buzzard, and I got so fed up with the strings rattling that I made my excuses to the guys I was playing with and took this bass outside to smash. I went back in and played a Precision".